Could Project Gunrunner be Texas’s Fast and Furious? Congress wants to know

As the Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz wrapped up the investigation and testimonies regarding Operation Fast and Furious, Sen. Charles E. Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa were planning a new assignment for him: investigation into Project Gunrunner.

This is not the first time that the two lawmakers have inquired with Department of Justice about this operation.

Grassley began his inquiries into this matter as early as March 2011 and then in October of last year, Grassley and Issa sent a joint request to Attorney General Eric Holder asking that he answer 12 questions relating to Project Gunrunner and how a weapon related to this effort was used to kill Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agent Jaime Zapata.

According to this month’s Operation Fast and Furious report issued by the inspector general, when Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich responded to the early requests for information his “letter did not respond substantively to Sen. Grassley’s inquiries.”

Consequently, Grassley and Issa are now appealing to the inspector general. Specifically, they want to know why the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) division in Dallas and Phoenix took no action to arrest Otilio and Ranferi Osorio and their neighbor Kevin Morrison, all of whom the ATF witnessed participating in gun trafficking as early as fall of 2010.

Documents obtained by the Houston Chronicle a year ago show that at different points in 2010, the ATF divisions ”had evidence implicating Osorio well before drug gangsters gunned down Zapata and his partner Victor Avila, who survived.”

“We didn’t ignore (the Osorios and Morrison). We looked into everybody,” a federal law enforcement source told Houston Chronicle last year, when inquiries into the Operation Gunrunner were being made.

However, Osorio brothers and Morrison were not arrested till February 28, 2011, almost two weeks after Zapata was murdered. And that is what troubles Grassley and Issa.